Adelaide to Alice Springs

Adina hotel: the old treasury building and our home in Adelaide

Adelaide is known as the city of churches. Note the  57 Chevy in the foreground: one of 3 that we saw carrying a wedding party. Our last day in Adelaide we saw 3-4 wedding parties...must be the season!

Sunday, February 9

Today,we board the Ghan, the train that crosses Australia from south to north (to Darwin) and has gone to Alice Springs since 1929.  We will be on the train for about 24 hours going only as far as the center of the country: Alice Springs. We splurged and got an upgraded room so we would have more room and a 3/4 size bed (rather than bunk beds)

We even have our own bathroom with a shower.

Below is the lounge car after which is our dining car.

And here we are awaiting our call for lunch.

We sat  with a couple of gents from England; one originally from Adelaide whose ancestors came here in 1850 as a carpenter...then was a gold miner and then bought land. The other was born in Malta and grew up in England. Both were world travelers and love Australia. Below was his elegant desert of PAnicotta

And our beautiful entree of blue fin crab

The following are a few views from our windows:

The front of our train (above) as we came around a curve ...

Fire in Flinders Range across from port pirie:

 

And a sunset that we watched during dinner (a bit difficult to capture from a moving train).

Monday

The red line starting from Adelaide and heading to Darwin is our train route...although we got off 1/2 way.

After a bumpy, noisy night of sleep, we awoke to a landscape that showed us why they refer to this as the Red Center" of Australia .the earth is even redder than Sedona.

Had breakfast with a couple In Their 70s who live near the Sunshine Coast ( where I think our friends the Nesses have a son)... He worked in the central Australia oil fields for many years and now they have a dog kennel. They take vacation in February each year. During breakfast we passed over the state line between South Australia and North Australia. Kind of like going from Az to NM. 

We past over the oldest river in the world, the Finke River,that has never changed course which at the moment is totally dry. Even here during dinosaur years...30 million years old! The conductor assures me that he has seen water running in the river and the increase in vegetation in the area suggests so. 

The banks of the Finke River

Crossing the Finke River

We have seen cattle and a blur of grey that I was told were kangaroos...but I missed them! 

We also saw a monument called The Ironman to commemorate the one millionth concrete "sleeper" laid on the stretch of track between Tarcoola and Alice Springs. This track was completed in 1980 and replaced the wooden track which had been destroyed by ants and floods. We heard of huge delays (ie weeks) in the olden days when portions ofthe train were damaged.

In a couple more hours we will be in Alice Springs. The train experience has been worthwhile in that it is a relaxing way to see the countryside, have some nice meals and visit with other people. Having the larger cabin was definitely worthwhile as we could relax in our own space without getting claustrophobic and get out of bed without killing ourselves :)

Alice Springs February 10/11

We were picked up by our hotel van and transported to our modest home for the evening. 

Much of what I was interested in seeing was the aboriginal art of the area and the desert park. 

We were also interested in going to the museums commemorating the flying doctors, the early telegraph and pioneering women: unfortunately, we didn't allocate enough time in Alice for those. 

But the settlement of this area by white people was begun in the 1800 s and greatly aided by the advent of the Ghan railroad.  The pioneers who came here looking for gold or to set up transcontinental communication or to provide medical care by plane must have been really interesting characters...there is nothing but red dirt around this town for an area the size of Europe! The completion of the overland telegraph in 1872 allowed farmers ( known as "pastoralists") to begin settling in the area with their cows. Then came the gold rush and other mining and camels to provision the area.

We took a cab to an industrial area where two indigenous galleries were located straight away as they closed early. The first was the Tjanpi Desert weaving center. Apparently about 15 years ago a program was begun to take materials out to the women in the outback to learn arts and crafts so they could be more self- sustaining. Their finished products are then picked up and sold at this a aboriginally owned gallery ( and govt subsidized.) while much of the work was quite primitive, there were many interesting objects.

We walked to the other gallery and studio, Tangentyere Artists which supported more local artists of more than 20 Cental Australian languages. While they had some of the. Interesting dot and symbol art, they had more figurative work...some which was reminiscent of Navajo folk art. Most unusual were the decorated hubcaps!

We then walked back to "Todd mall" (the dry Todd river runs thru the town). To see a couple more galleries, a museum and to meet several artists sitting on the grassy area nearby. The art work that is most popular has been commercialized into ipad covers,handkerchiefs, water bottle covers, mugs and you name it...thus, it was particularly gratifying to buy some artwork from a young mother whose grandmother (apparently well known ) and baby daughter were hanging out, selling their work directly.

I wish we had more space in our house for wall art as we loved her big pieces.

Even the garbage cans are decorated with Aboriginal art!

We walked thru town, the park by the river bed and across the bridge back to our hotel.

We fought with the wifi and lost..so we decided to go to the casino hotel  where they had free wifi throughout and have dinner..well, we did play enough blackjack to win enough money for a Lovely dinner and to check email and sports scores (go,wildcats!).

Eight o'clock the next morning we were picked up to go see the Alice Springs desert Park, nestled in the foothills of the McDonnell range.

 This lovely park, sponsored by the state, shows the ecosystems that exist in the middle and north of Australia: desert rivers, woodlands and sand country. 

There are guides who provide interpretive talks such as one on Aboriginal adaptation to the land,

 birds ( with free-flying birds helping with the presentation) and nocturnal animals.

 They work to rid the area of invasive plants.   So there is much that is similar to the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy...but they do not appear to do research or use volunteer help. And it is a fee-based visit, not a preserve.

I saw some mounds that looked like termite or ant mounds and later found out more about them.

They were created by termites or "white ants" who eat spinyflex. The ants eat termites and thorny devils eat the ants. Thus completes one small ecosystem. Hopefully we will see these little devils later in our trip.

I also learned that tnly indigenous animals in Australia are marsupials. No cats are native and even the famous dingos are immigrants.

Well..after a morning at the park we are off to the airport to fly south to Yulara and Uluru.

(Views from the plane:)